Carolyn McConnell w/ Julia Marks, MOTHERHOOD DISCOUNTED

Activist and lawyer Carolyn McConnell discusses her book Motherhood Discounted: Care Work in America Before and After Roe. For readers trying to make sense of America’s political turmoil and eroding reproductive rights, an incisive examination, enhanced with personal stories, of how care work has been extracted and compelled throughout American history. She is joined by Julia Marks, Interim Advocacy Director and attorney at Legal Voice.

In the wake of Dobbs, and now with the country in the grip of Trump and a resurgent far right, the question everyone seems to be asking is—How could this happen in America? Lawyer Carolyn McConnell has a few ideas.

After becoming a mother, McConnell was forced to face the myth of autonomy that American individualism breeds: the idea that independence is always good and dependence always bad. Why does America have such a problem offering social support for care work, she wondered, when mothering is the essential work of reproducing society?

In Motherhood Discounted, McConnell turns a searching eye on autonomy, asking what it is and what it is for. Tracing this myth’s development through American history, she frames each episode with personal stories and incisive analysis. In doing so, she offers women readers of all ages seeking to understand their own experiences in these disturbing times a potent explanation for how we got here—and sounds a clarion call for political change.

Carolyn McConnell is a lawyer and an activist dedicated to resisting attacks on public services. She has published extensively on reproductive rights, feminism, and women’s history and holds graduate degrees in philosophy from Johns Hopkins University and nonfiction writing from the University of Iowa. She lives in Seattle.

Julia Marks is an attorney at Legal Voice, a legal non-profit that fights for gender justice across the Northwest using strategic litigation, policy advocacy, education, and coalition building. Julia works with colleagues in Washington, Idaho, and Montana to advance reproductive justice and LGBTQ+ rights and to further the conditions for opportunity, safety, and economic justice in our communities.

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Host or Publisher Elliott Bay Book Company